"Statute Forbidding Any One to Annoy or Unduly Injure the Freshmen. Each
and every one attached to this university is forbidden to offend with
insult, torment, harass, drench with water or urine, throw on or defile
with dust or any filth, mock by whistling, cry at them with a terrifying
voice, or dare to molest in any way whatsoever physically or severely,
any, who are called freshmen, in the market, streets, courts, colleges
and living houses, or any place whatsoever, and particularly in the
present college, when they have entered in order to matriculate or are
leaving after matriculation."Leipzig University Statute (1495)Found at http://askthepast.blogspot.com/2013/08/how-to-treat-freshmen-1495.html?spref=fb
Middle-aged in more ways than one, eh? I sometimes wonder what is like in the days of town-gown riots in almost all the great medieval university cities and think the odd one might have been fun. Of course I wouldn't want most of my colleagues guarding my back--they probably wouldn't know what to do with a broken bottle besides hunting despairingly for a recycling bin.
ReplyDeleteDamn! No use for the catheter, then.
DeleteThe prospectus for the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, circa 1970, allegedly included the sentence: "Apart from an isolated incident of violence in 1470 when the dean of the faculty of arts was shot at with bows and arrows, and if one glosses over the Jacobite demonstrations of 1715, the university has been singularly free of student unrest."
DeleteSo if you ever invent a time machine and decide to go visit some medieval town-gown riots, don't bother with St. Andrews.
"Mock by whistling"? Really? What would that have sounded like?
ReplyDelete"Wheet wheew! (pant pant pant) Ah-oo-gah!"
DeleteI believe that's actually how Abelard met Heloise.
The mating call of the medieval male? :)
DeleteWith the exception of "annoy," which they suffer just by our mere existance, this list is consistent with current policies, though it's more explicit. I'm sure I'd get in trouble for pouring urine on them, even though it's not in the faculty handbook.
ReplyDeleteBack then you could still get away with *pouring* urine on freshmen; you just couldn't drench them.
DeleteThose were the days.
It's just not fair that they get to do all of this to each other, but we're not allowed to do any of it to them.
ReplyDeleteBut if they return as sophomores, all bets are off.
ReplyDeleteYou're right! I'll start saving some empty plastic bottles.
Delete